Steve Martini - The Arraignment

“Where you figuring on going?” he asks.

“The glass pyramid.”

“See Papa Ibarra?” he says.

I nod. “I assume he’s the only who can tell us what this Mejicano Rosen is and help us find Adam.”

“And who killed Julio.” Herman walks to the back of the car and opens the back hatch. He finds a key on the ring and slips it into a key slot in the floor, turning it. The entire section of carpeted flooring lifts out. Underneath is a rack with three long guns and something that looks like a short machine gun.

“Can you shoot?”

“I’ve fired a gun before.”

“Not what I asked. Can you shoot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Here, you take the shotgun.” He hands it to me. “You slide the pump underneath each time you shoot. Like this. Then shoot again. This little thing. This the safety. Keep it off when you’re shooting. Think you can handle that?”

“Yeah.”

“Just don’t point it anywhere near me.” He grabs a box of shells and hands them to me. “I’ll show you how to load it inside.” Then he pulls the little machine gun from the rack and gathers up several magazines of ammunition, each one with a gleaming, round copper bullet protruding from the forward side of the open end.

“We’re not going to go in there with these?”

“Watch me.”

In the car I slip on a pair of long pants from the shopping bag in back and put on socks while Herman drives. A block from the glass pyramid, we stop near a restaurant and I use the pay phone to call the police and tell of the location of Julio’s body. Then I hang up.

Herman doesn’t want to talk about it. Man on a mission, he turns onto the private lane leading to the glass pyramid. The road is lined with palm trees planted in the thirty-foot strip of grass that forms the center divider.

We wind along this toward the hotel. He parks in a space out in front.

“Go inside, get us a room, high up. Close to the top floor as you can get.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. Bring the key back here.”

A few minutes later, I’m back in the car. “Eighth floor. Is that high enough for you?”

“It’ll do.”

“Now what?”

“Sit tight.” He backs out of the space and pulls around the hotel, ten stories of smoked glass on an angle, reflecting sunlight like a solar generator.

Herman drives through the parking area, edging his way around the building until he finds what he’s looking for: dumpsters and service vehicles, a small electric cart with canvas bags filled with dirty linen in the back.

“This the place.” He parks the car.

“What now?”

“You just sit here fo’ a second.” He gets out and goes over to the cart. Hands in his pockets, he stands, looking around, ultimate stealth, your usual seven-foot dark mountain. Then he grabs a folded canvas linen bag from the back of the cart and returns to the car. This time he gets in the backseat.

“What are you doing?”

“Tol’ ya, just sit tight.” He leans over the backseat into the rear compartment, grabbing the guns, the pump shotgun, and the stubby little machine gun, making sure they’re loaded, the magazines are in, and the safeties are on.

“Now. In a minute I’m goin’ over there.” He talks while he checks the guns. “Do you see that door?” He nods in the direction with his head.

“Yes. I see it.”

“In a second I’m goin’ in there. What I want you to do is just sit right here ’til you see me wave from that door.” He gathers up the extra ammunition and puts it in the laundry bag, unclips the web belt from around his waist, and drops the fanny pack with the forty-five into the laundry bag too.

“Then I want you to get out of the car, walk over there. Don’t run, just walk. And bring this shit witcha.”

He hands me thirty pounds of canvas with sharp edges sticking out everywhere. “You got that?”

“I got it.”

He reads my expression, one filled with doubt.

“Hey, fuckin’ Tolt, he’s your friend. I don’t care they cut his ears, nose en balls off, hang ’em on a charm bracelet. But this man upstairs, this Pablo Eyebarra. Far as you and I are concerned, he be the fuckin’ Wizard a Oz. Man with all the answers. Now we can either go talk to him or we can go home. I don’t know ’bout you, but I ain’t goin’ home ’til I get the answer to at least one question. Who the fuck shot Julio? So you in or you out?”

“I’m in,” I tell him.

“Good. I thought so. Den let’s do it.” Herman smiles through his chipped tooth, opens the door, and seconds later he disappears into the service entrance at the back of the hotel.

After letting Saldado practice his meat-cutting arts on my arm and becoming gunnery target for the Ibarrian Air Force, I am in no position to question Herman’s judgment. Whatever he’s missing on that score, he makes up for in loyalty. The difference between us is he’s more direct.

Before I know it, he’s back, waving at me to come.

I get out of the car with the bag over my shoulder, Santa Claus with an arsenal. I walk quickly toward the door. When I get there, Herman takes the bag and pulls me inside like a rag doll. I follow him down a short corridor. I don’t have a lot of choice; he has me by the belt towing me along. I see some guy in whites and a chef’s hat cross the corridor in front of us, passing from the kitchen to another room across the hall. He doesn’t see us.

Herman opens a door and pushes me into a dark service closet, then closes the door behind us.

“Gotta find the fuckin’ light,” he says.

We stand in the dark for a couple of seconds until I hear the metal beads click on the light over our heads. Herman with the string pull.

“Here. Put this on.” He hands me a white linen smock, the kind waiters in posh restaurants wear.

“Would you like to tell me what we’re doing? Or is that a surprise?”

“Probably best you don’t know the details. That way you free. Know what I mean? Adapt to the circumstances. What my main tai chi man says. What you don’t know can’t fuck witch your brain.”

“Inscrutable.”

“What ya say?”

“Nothing.

I slip on the smock and button it up to the tunic collar.

In the meantime, Herman is going through a bag of soiled ones, trying to find a tunic big enough. He finally settles on one. He has to leave three of the buttons undone high up around his chest and neck. It fits him like a rubber coat, the bottom barely reaching his belt.

“Don’t worry. Man’s gonna be in no mood be doin’ fashion reviews. Be too busy with his ass pucker lookin’ down the barrel your gun.”

“We aren’t gonna shoot him?”

He doesn’t look at me.

“Herman.”

“Depends what he has to say. He tells me he sent somebody over to shoot Julio, you can expect to find little bits of him stuck in the holes I’m gonna be making in his wall with little emma gee in the bag there.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Think what you want. But you gonna be thinkin’ it in the dark by yourself in about ten seconds.” He grabs the bag with the guns, pulls the string on the light overhead, then opens the door a crack and peeks out.

“Show time,” he says and steps out into the hall, the linen bag over his shoulder looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy after a bad day. I watch as he latches onto a rolling stainless steel cart against the far wall.

There’s a linen tablecloth over the top of it and a warming compartment underneath. He checks to make sure there are no lit sterno candles inside the compartment, then slings the bag with the guns inside, and closes the stainless steel door.

I look at my watch. It’s ten minutes to four. Adam and I weren’t scheduled to meet Ibarra until six-thirty.